Palm: Apps will give Pre the edge

 

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By Benny Har-Even

Posted on 7 Jul 2009 at 15:49

Palm is confident that the ease of writing apps for its Web OS-powered phone will give the Pre the edge when it finally arrives in the UK.

Palm announced that the Pre will arrive before Christmas, exclusively on the O2 network earlier today.

Dave Whalen, senior vice president for Palm's global sales, told our sister site IT PRO that the arrival of the SDK would be a big boost for the platform. "We've got lots of people in the beta [SDK], and tens of thousands wanted to get in," he said. "Historically, we've been very enthusiastic [about apps]."

Although he couldn't put an exact figure on the number of apps currently available, he said: "we have lots... we've got sports, stocks, games - we're really pleased with the number."

He said that paid-for apps would be likely once the SDK is available, which he confirmed as being before the end of the summer.

Whalen also said that thousands of older Palm apps could be ported over to the Web OS platform.

Mark Eastwood, product manager for Palm said that anyone familiar with CSS, JavaScript and HTML would have the skills to develop for Palm. "If you're familiar with these, then you're fully tooled to bring apps to the platform".

Fir for business?

Asked whether Palm saw the Pre as a consumer or a business device, Whalen answered: "It's a lifestyle device. Everyone is busy and has business and personal lives... this is the first device that lets you bring them together."

He also admitted that Palm knows the Pre is not fully ready for the enterprise. "We recognise that there are things we need to do [to make it enterprise ready]. [But] we've got great support for Exchange out of the box, with SSL, and contact look up," said Eastwood.

There was no clue as to whether Adobe Flash support would be added to the Pre - no smartphone currently supports Flash content, though Adobe has demonstrated it running on Android devices.

Eastwood confirmed that there were no technical limitations as to why the Pre couldn't handle flash, saying that it was down to business relationships and timing.

IT PRO also quizzed Whalen about reports of the Pre suffering from lacklustre battery life.
"The majority of people are happy with the performance," he responded.

IT Pro: Apps key to Pre success, says Palm